Learn how to get the most out of Premiere Pro by configuring preference settings for several things from appearance to playback, audio, and more.

You can customize the look and behavior of
Premiere Pro, from determining the default length of transitions
to setting the brightness of the user interface. Most of these preferences
remain in effect until you change them. The preferences you set
for scratch disks, however, are saved with your projects. Whenever
you open a project, it automatically defaults to the scratch disks
you selected for it when you set up that project.

To open the Preferences dialog box,
choose Edit > Preferences (Windows) or Premiere Pro >
Preferences (Mac OS), and select the category of preferences you
want to change.

To restore default preference settings, hold down Alt
(Windows) or Option (Mac OS) while the application is starting.
You can release the Alt key or Option key when the splash screen
appears.

To restore default preference settings and plug-in cache
at the same time, hold down Shift-Alt (Windows) or Shift-Option
(Mac OS) while the application is starting. Release the Shift-Alt
keys or Shift-Option key when the splash screen appears.

Set general preferences

In the General pane of the Preferences dialog box, you can customize settings for several things from transition duration to tool tips, like the following:

At Startup

You can choose to display Premiere Pro's Start screen or display the files that you most recently opened.

When Opening a Project

Specify whether you want to see the Start screen or the Open dialog when opening a project.

Bins

Bin behavior when double-clicking a bin, or double-clicking with the Shift or Option keys can be controlled in the Bins preference.

Projects

Project behavior when double-clicking a project, or holding the Alt key while clicking a project.

Show Event Indicator

To turn off the event notification pop-up window that appears in the lower right-corner of the user interface, deselect this preference. For more information, see Event notification.

Show Tool Tips

Lets you turn tool tips on or off.

Enable Display Color Management

When this option is turned on, Premiere Pro reads the ICC profile selected in your operating system and does a conversion to display colors perfectly on the monitor. This feature applies to the Premiere Pro Program and Source monitors, thumbnail previews in the Project panel, Media browser in Premiere Pro and Media Encoder, and export and encoding previews in Premiere Pro and Media Encoder.

By default, color management is disabled in Premiere Pro and Media Encoder.

Leave Color Management off if your screen matches the media on the timeline. This works well for Rec. 709 and sRGB and YouTube delivery.

Turning Color Management on is useful for scenarios where you want your display to reproduce the color appearance of the timeline on a reference monitor.

Consider the following examples to decide whether you want to enable or disable color management:

1. Timeline is 709, display is P3. Without color management enabled, the display appearance would be too saturated and would not match your export.
2. Timeline is 2020, display is not 2020. Without color management enabled, the display (709, sRGB, or P3) would look washed out and would not match your export.
3. Timeline is 709, display is sRGB. With color management disabled, the display matches what a YouTube viewer will see on her sRGB display, which will be slightly washed out (gamma ~0.9) compared to a 709 reference monitor. With color management enabled, the mid-tones on the sRGB display should match a 709 reference monitor, but some shadow details are lost, as 8bit sRGB encoding in the shadows don't have the fine granularity of the 8-bit 709 shadows; the 20 lowest 709 codes are crunched into the 7 lowest sRGB codes.
4. Timeline and display are both 709. There is no need to enable color management as it would make no difference.

Note:

Premiere Pro does not color manage external transmit monitors hooked up through video cards from companies like AJA or Blackmagic. Configure that hardware outside Premiere Pro.

Premiere Pro, however, does color manage a secondary computer monitor used as a transmit monitor. It is part of the desktop of the operating system - hooked up through HDMI, Display Port, DVI, or Thunderbolt.

Enabling Display Color Management does not change the colors in your exported files. It only manages the colors that you see displayed on your monitor. It is necessary so that you can accurately judge what the colors look like on a true Rec709 display (HDTV for example). In the past, it was necessary to manually set your OS display profile to Rec709 to view accurate colors, and sometimes it was not possible. Display color management takes the guesswork and displays correct colors no matter what ICC profile your display is set to in the OS.

Set Appearance preferences

In the Appearance pane of the Preferences dialog box, you can set the overall brightness of the user interface.

You can also control the brightness and saturation of the blue highlight color, interactive controls, and focus indicators.

Set Audio Preferences

Automatch Time

The Automatch Time preference specifies the time, in the Audio Mixer, for any control that has been adjusted to return to its previous setting. Affected controls are Volume, Pan, Effect, and Send parameter knobs in Audio, Submix, and (except sends) Master track. Automatch Time preference affects properties in Touch mode, and in Read mode for effects with keyframes.

5.1 Mixdown Type

Specifies how Premiere Pro mixes source channels to 5.1 audio
tracks.

Play Audio While Scrubbing

Enables audio scrubbing. You can create a keyboard shortcut called “Toggle Audio During Scrubbing” to toggle audio scrubbing on or off while scrubbing. Using a keyboard shortcut is preferable to returning to the Preferences dialog box each time you want to turn audio scrubbing on or off.

Maintain Pitch While Shuttling

Lets you maintain the audio pitch during scrubbing and playback while using the J,K,L keys. Selecting this preference helps improve the clarity of speech when playback is at a higher or slower than normal speed.

Mute Input During Timeline Recording

To prevent monitoring of the audio inputs while recording the timeline, check this box

Defines the linear keyframe thinning and minimum time interval thinning.

Linear Keyframe Thinning

Creates keyframes only at points that don’t have a linear relationship to the start and end keyframes. For example, if you are automating a fade from 0 dB to –12 dB. With this option selected, Premiere Pro creates keyframes only at the points that represent an increase in value from the beginning (0 dB) and ending (–12 dB) keyframes. If you don’t select this option, Premiere Pro creates several incremental keyframes of identical values between those two points, depending on the speed at which you change the value. This option is selected by default.

Minimum Time Interval Thinning

Creates keyframes only at intervals larger than the value you specify. Enter a value from 1 through 2000 milliseconds.

Large Volume Adjustment

This preference lets you set the number of decibels to increase when using the Increase Clip Volume Many command.

Render Edit in Audition files to

While sending clips to Audition, you can save these files in the scratch disk location, or next to the original media file.

Audio Plug-in Manager

Launches the Audio Plug-in Manager dialog box to let you work with third-party VST3 plug-ins, and Audio Units (AU) plug-ins on Mac.

Set Audio Hardware preferences

In the Audio Hardware pane of the Preferences dialog box (Edit > Preferences > Audio Hardware), you can specify the computer audio device and settings. You can also specify the ASIO and MME settings (Windows only), or CoreAudio setting (Mac OS only) that Premiere Pro uses for audio playback and recording. When you connect an audio hardware device, the hardware settings for that device type, such as default input, default output, master clock, latency, and sample rate are loaded in this dialog box. For example, the following screen shows the settings for a connected MME device (Windows) in which you can modify the default selections in properties:

MME Audio Hardware Preferences

The following image shows the preferences for low-latency CoreAudio devices that can support input-only, output-only, and full-duplex modes. You can change the properties such as Master Clock (MOTU, SPDIF, and ADAT) and I/O Buffer Size (low latency, 32 samples).

CoreAudio Hardware Preferences

Configure audio inputs and outputs

When you configure inputs and outputs for recording and playback, Adobe Premiere Pro can use these kinds of sound card drivers:

In Windows, ASIO drivers support professional cards and MME drivers typically support standard cards.

In Mac OS, CoreAudio drivers support both professional and standard cards.

ASIO and CoreAudio drivers are preferable because they provide better performance and lower latency. You can also monitor audio as you record it and instantly hear volume, pan, and effects changes during playback.

(MME and CoreAudio) For Master Clock, choose the input or output to which you want other digital audio hardware to synchronize (ensuring accurate alignment of samples).

For I/O Buffer Size (ASIO and CoreAudio) or Latency (MME), specify the lowest setting possible without audio dropouts. The ideal setting depends on the speed of your system, so some experimentation is necessary.

Choose a Sample Rate for the audio hardware. (For common rates for different output mediums, see Understanding sample rate in Adobe Audition Help.)

(Optional) To optimize the performance of ASIO and CoreAudio cards, click Settings. For more information, consult the documentation for the sound card.

Under Output Mapping, you can specify the target speaker in your computer sound system for each supported audio channel.

Set Auto Save preferences

Automatically Save Projects

By default, Premiere Pro automatically saves your project every 15 minutes and retains the last five versions of the project file on the hard disk.

You can revert to a previously saved version at any time. Archiving many iterations of a project consumes relatively little disk space because project files are much smaller than source video files. It’s best to save project files to the same drive as your application. Archived files are saved in the Premiere Pro Auto-Save folder.

Automatically Save Every

Automatically save Projects, and type the number of minutes you would like between saves.

Maximum Project Versions

Enter the number of versions of a project file you want to save. For example, if you type 10, Premiere Pro saves the ten most recent versions.

Note:

When you specify auto-save to occur at regular intervals, Premiere Pro auto-saves a project on detecting changes to the project file.

The auto-save occurs irrespective of whether you manually save the changes to the project or not. Earlier, Premiere Pro would not execute auto-save if you manually saved within the interval setting. If the system goes idle for a period beyond the interval setting, Premiere Pro forces an auto-save.

When Premiere Pro auto-saves a project, a directory named "auto-save" is created in your Creative Cloud online storage. All the backed-up projects are stored in the "auto-save" directory.

You can access your backed-up projects from the Files tab of your Creative Cloud desktop application. Or you can access the files from your Creative Cloud account on the Web.

Auto Save also saves the current project(s)

When this setting is enabled, Auto Save creates an archived copy of your current projects, but also saves the current working project. This setting is off by default.

Auto saved versions have a suffix with the date and time it was saved (yy-mm-dd-hh-mm-ss) appended to the project name (for example, ProjectName-2018-08-31_09-53-41.prproj).

When an auto save occurs, Premiere Pro creates a new backup project file and adds it to the auto-save folder as an emergency project backup. This file is always the latest saved version of that project. Here are some of the characteristics of the emergency back project file:

The backup file has the same name as the project, it does not have any suffix.

Premiere Pro produces only one emergency backup file per project, and it is overwritten at each Auto Save interval and when you save the current project.

Capture preferences

Controls how Premiere Pro transfers video and audio directly from a deck or camera. (None of the other project settings options affect capturing.) The contents of this panel depend on the editing mode. If you’re capturing DV footage, use the default DV capture settings. When DV/IEEE 1394 Capture is the selected capture format, no options are available because the options are automatically set to the IEEE 1394 standard. More capture formats and options appear if you install other software, such as software included with a capture card certified to be compatible with Premiere Pro.

Note:

For P2 DVCPRO 50 and P2 DVCPRO HD projects, the Capture Format setting is not relevant. It is because the assets are captured and recorded directly to the P2 card as digital files by the camera.

Control Surface preferences

In the Control Surface panel of the Preferences dialog, you can configure your hardware control device.

The Edit, Add, and Remove buttons let you add, edit, or remove control surfaces in your configuration.

Under Device Class, click Add to select the device. You can add either EUCON or Mackie. Or you can add both.

To specify configure settings like MIDI Input Device and MIDI Output Device for the selected control surface, click Edit.

Device Control preferences

In the Device Control pane of the Preferences
dialog box, you specify the settings Premiere Pro uses to control
a playback/recording device, such as a VTR or camcorder.

Graphics preferences

Text Engine

If you need support for Western, Chinese, Japanese, Latin, or Korean languages, select European and East Asian. If you need Middle-eastern or Indic language support, choose South Asian and Middle Eastern.

Editing Text in Middle Eastern Languages

If you need Ligature support, select Ligatures. If you want support for Hindi numerals, select Hindi Digits. You can also choose if you want the text to flow left to right or right to left.

All changes take effect the next time you create a text layer.

Labels preferences

Label Colors

In the Label Colors section, you can change the default colors and color names. You can label assets with these colors and color names in the Project panels.

Label Defaults

In the Label Defaults section, you can change the default colors assigned to bins, sequences, and different types of media.

Media preferences

Indeterminate Media Timebase

Specifies the frame rate for imported still-image sequences.

Timecode

Specifies whether Premiere Pro shows the original timecode imported
clips, or assigns new timecode to them, starting at 00:00:00.

Frame Count

Specifies whether Premiere Pro assigns a 0, or a 1 to the
first frame of an imported clip, or assigns a number by timecode
conversion.

Default Media Scaling

To specify whether you want to Scale to frame size or Set to frame size, set this media preference. If you select scale to frame size, then Premiere Pro automatically scales imported assets to the project’s default frame size.

To specify where you want Premiere Pro to save clip marker, set this option. If you select this option, clip markers are saved with the media file. If you turn off this option, clip markers are saved in the Premiere Pro project file.

Enable Clip And XMP Metadata Linking

To link clip metadata to XMP metadata, so that changing one changes the other, select this check box

Include Captions On Import

To detect and automatically import embedded closed caption data in an embedded closed caption file, select this check box. Deselect this check box to not import embedded captions, which helps save time while importing.

Enable proxies

If you want Premiere Pro to automatically switch to displaying the proxy video in the timeline after a proxy job is complete, select this option.

Allow duplicate media during project import

If you want to allow duplicate media while importing a project, select this option. Deselect this option if you don't want multiple copies while importing.

Automatically Hide Dependent Clips

When you select this option, Premiere Pro hides the master clips when dragging in a sequence from another project.

Enable accelerated H.264 decoding (required restart)

If you want H.264 editing to be faster by using the hardware decoders in your system, select this option.

Premiere Pro supports growing files for OP1A MXF files. The preference allows users to opt whether Premiere automatically refreshes as they grow, and if so, how frequently. This preference allows you to edit with these files in your project immediately.

Media Cache preferences

Media cache preferences

Media cache files are created to display audio waveforms and improve playback of some media types. Regular cleaning of old or unused media cache files can help maintain optimal performance. Deleted cache files are recreated whenever source media requires them.

You can change the locations of the media cache files by clicking Browse and navigating to the desired folder location. You can also opt to save the .cfa and .pek media cache files next to the original media files when possible.

To delete unused media cache files, click Delete Unused.

You can set your preferences for the media cache using the following options:

Do not delete cache files automatically - This setting is enabled by default in the Media Cache Preferences. Automatic deletion of media cache files applies only to .pek, .cfa and .ims files within the subdirectory folders Peak Files and Media Cache Files.

Automatically delete cache files older than - The default value is 90 days. You can change it to a time period of your preference.

Automatically delete oldest cache files when cache exceeds - The default is 10% of the volume size where the media cache is located.

Note:

When either the age or size preference is enabled, changes take place after quitting and restarting Premiere Pro. On the next application launch, Premiere Pro determines whether the media cache files meet the criteria for deletion, and if so, begins deletion 10 minutes after launch.

This housekeeping then occurs on a weekly basis from that point onward.

Memory preferences

In the Memory pane of the Preferences dialog
box, you can specify the amount of RAM reserved for other applications,
and for Premiere Pro. For example, as you reduce the amount of RAM
reserved for other applications, the amount of RAM left available
for Premiere Pro increases.

Some sequences, such as those
containing high-resolution source video or still images, require
large amounts of memory for the simultaneous rendering of multiple
frames. These assets can force Premiere Pro to cancel rendering
and to give a Low Memory Warning alert. In these cases, you can
maximize the available memory by changing the Optimize Rendering
For preference from Performance to Memory. Change this preference
back to Performance when rendering no longer requires memory optimization.

Playback preferences

In the Playback pane of the Preferences dialog box, you can select the default player for audio or video, and set preroll and postroll preferences. You can also access device settings for third-party capture cards.

Premiere Pro uses the player to play media from clips and sequences for the following:

Source Monitor

Program Monitor

The preview area at the top of the Project panel

Trim mode

Trim Monitor

Multi-Camera Monitor

The video transition preview in the Effect Controls panel.

You can choose the default player for your computer, or a third-party plug-in player for Premiere Pro. Third-party players are installed with some capture cards.

Preroll: The number of seconds before an edit point when playing back footage for several editing functions.

Postroll: The number of seconds after an edit point when playing back footage for several editing functions.

Step forward/Back Many: Specifies the number of frames to move when you use the keyboard shortcut Shift+Left or Right arrow. The default is set to ten frames.

Pause Media Encoder queue during playback: Pauses the encoding queue in Adobe Media Encoder when you are playing back a sequence or a project in Premiere Pro.

Audio Device: Choose an audio device in the Audio Device menu.

Video Device: Set up DV and third-party devices for output by clicking the Settings button. If a third-party capture card is installed, click the Settings button to access the Mercury Transmit dialog box for video formats, and pixel formats.A check box is available for disabling video output when in the background.

Playback preferences

Sync Settings preferences

When you work with Premiere Pro on multiple machines, managing and syncing preferences, presets, and libraries between them can be time-consuming, complex, and error prone. The new Sync Settings feature lets you sync your general preferences, keyboard shortcuts, presets, and libraries to the Creative Cloud. For more information, see Sync Settings in Premiere Pro CC.

Timeline preferences

Audio, video, and still images have a default duration in Premiere Pro.

Video and Audio Transition defaults

Specify the default duration for audio and video transitions

Still Image Default Duration

To display still images, specify the default duration.

Timeline Playback Auto-Scrolling

When a sequence is longer than the visible Timeline, you can select from different options to auto-scroll the Timeline during playback. Page Scroll moves the Timeline automatically to a new view after the playhead moves offscreen. Selecting this option ensures that playback is continuous and doesn't stop. Selecting Smooth Scroll keeps the playhead in the middle of the screen, while the clips and time ruler move by.

Timeline Mouse Scrolling

You can choose vertical or horizontal scrolling. By default, mouse scrolling is horizontal for Windows and vertical for Mac OS. For Windows, press the Ctrl key to switch to vertical scrolling.

Default Audio Tracks

Defines the type of track in which the clip audio channels are presented when a clip is added to a sequence—Mono, Stereo, 5.1, or Multichannel Mono. Premiere Pro imports and renders each of these track types in the source format (if you select the Use File option) or converted to another track format (if you select one of the track types other than Use File). The following list describes the compatibility between tracks and clip types:

Use File imports the file in the source format, in this case, as 5.1 channel surround media.

Mono imports file as mono, which results in six mono channels.

Stereo imports file as stereo, mapping the six channels to three stereo pairs.

5.1 imports the file as 5.1 media, with the mapping kept exactly as in the source file. In this case, it works the same as the Use File option.

Adaptive imports the file as an N (Max N is 32) channel clip with the first six channels and the rest of them as silent.

Multichannel Mono Media

Lets you specify how files that have N discrete channels are interpreted inside PPro. The options are:

Use File Imports the file in the source format, in this case, as multichannel mono media with the same number of channels as in the source.

Mono Same as Use File, that is, all N channels are kept as N mono tracks.

Stereo The N mono channels in the source are grouped into (N/2) stereo pairs.

5.1 Imports a multichannel mono file as sets of one or more 5.1 tracks by adding extra silent channels (if needed) to complete sets of 5.1 configuration.

Adaptive Imports the file as an N (Max N is 32) channel clip with the channels mapped to the same number of mono channels in the source media.

Set Focus On The Timeline When Performing Insert/Overwrite Edits

Select this preference if you want the Timeline to be active, not the Source Monitor, after you make an edit.

Snap Playhead In Timeline When Snap Is Enabled

To turn on snapping, select this preference.

With snapping turned on, moving the playhead in the Timeline, makes the playhead snap or jump to an edit directly. For example, you can align the playhead to a specific marker with snapping enabled.

Toggle snapping on and off by pressing S on the keyboard.

At playback end, return to beginning when restarting playback

Use this option to control what happens when you are at the end of a sequence and you restart playback. If this option is not selected, Premiere Pro stops. If you select this option, Premiere Pro jumps back to the beginning.

Display Out Of Sync Indicators For Unlinked Clips

Displays out-of-sync indicators for audio and video when they are unlinked and moved out of sync.

Play work area after rendering previews

If you want Premiere Pro to play the whole project from the beginning after rendering, select this preference.

When you drag a clip into a sequence, Premiere Pro detects if the attributes of the clip match the sequence settings. If the attributes do not match, the Show Clip Mismatch Warning dialog box appears.

Fit Clip Dialog Opens For Edit Range Mismatches

When you have different In and Out points set in the Source Monitor and Program Monitor, a Fit Clip dialog box appears. The Fit Clip dialog lets you choose the In and Out points to use. Select this preference to let Premiere Pro remember your choice and not display the Fit Clip dialog box every time.

Match frame sets in point

When you enable this option, Premiere Pro opens the master clip in the Source Monitor and adds a point at the current time indicator (playhead) instead of showing the clip in and out points.

Trim preferences

The Trim Monitor includes Large Trim Offset
buttons. Clicking one of these buttons moves a trim point earlier
or later. In the Trim pane of the Preferences dialog box, you can
specify the number of frames that the Large Trim Offset buttons
move trim points.

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